The series finale of “The Late Show” is airing on CBS now, with Stephen Colbert giving thanks to his staff, studio audience and viewers.

Colbert walked out to deafening cheers from the studio audience inside the Ed Sullivan Theater.

“If you’re just tuning into ‘The Late Show,’ you missed a lot,” he quipped, alluding to CBS parent company Paramount’s controversial and politically charged decision to cancel the show.

When the host noted that Thursday night was the final broadcast and his fans booed, he put up his finger and said, “No, no, we were lucky enough to be here for the last 11 years. You can’t take this for granted.”

The monologue was interrupted by celebrity friends like Bryan Cranston, Paul Rudd, and Tim Meadows, who all vied to be Colbert’s last guest.

Colbert made a few jokes about the circumstances; “A lot of people have been asking me what I plan to do after tonight, and the answer is drugs,” he joked.

But Colbert, true to self, also had some sincere things to say about his relationship with the late-night audience.

Colbert harkened back to the way he introduced himself as a blowhard character on Comedy Central’s “Colbert Report” in 2005: “Anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news ‘at’ you.”

Once he moved from Comedy Central to the much bigger CBS stage in 2015, “I realized pretty soon … that our job over here was different,” he said. “We were here to feel the news with you. And I don’t know about you, but I sure have felt it.”

After Colbert and his producers taped the final episode on Thursday evening, they headed to a star-studded wrap party nearby.

Colbert has said in interviews that he hasn’t had much time to think ahead to what he might want to do next.

“I don’t have much better of an answer than most college seniors do, which is I’ve got to finish this first, because it takes almost the entirety of my brain to do this show,” he told People magazine. “So we’ll land this plane and we’ll check out the view from there.”

CBS said Colbert’s set will be donated to the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago.

As for the famed Ed Sullivan Theater stage where the show was produced for decades, there are no firm plans for what will become of the 100-year-old performance space.

“The fact that nothing’s gonna come in here breaks my heart,” Colbert told Architectural Digest in a video tour of the theater. “But someone will figure it out, and I wish them all the luck in the world — because they’re gonna love it.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.